STEPHEN FRY has been forced to cancel plans to film a portion of his new documentary series in Japan after the Japanese Embassy complained about a joke he made in an episode of his game show QI.

Fry, 53, had hoped to film a segment of his new series – Planet Word, a series on the evolution of languages around the world – in Japan, but the BBC said it had been forced to shelve the segment of the show because of complaints it received over the QI joke.

The joke was coined in a QI episode aired last year, when Fry and his panellists were discussing the fate of the only man to have survived both of the atomic bombs that struck Japan in 1945 at the end of World War II.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi had been burnt in the first blast at Hiroshima, but had travelled to Nagasaki by train three days later – only to be caught in the second explosion.

Fry, BBC News reported, shared his surprise that the trains from Hiroshima were still running after the bombing – an observation which prompted complaints from the Japanese Embassy, which said Fry was making light of the country’s horrors.

The Register quotes the BBC as saying that while QI had not set out “to cause offence with any of the people or subjects it covers… we understand why [Japanese viewers] did not feel it appropriate for inclusion in the programme.”

Filming for the same series brought Fry to Ireland over the winter, where he was given a cameo role in Ros na Rún as part of his investigations into the Irish language.